It is always concerning to hear of a highly complex situation reduced to a black-and-white argument in an attempt to win over the public. It's concerning because it gets in the way of a genuine endeavour to understand the manifold issues involved. But it's also concerning because it's a con, an attempt to persuade people not with reason, but rather by gratifying our all-too-human hunger for easy answers.

In truth, there are few easy answers. The more you know about a subject, the more complicated it tends to become. And this is undoubtedly true about smoking and whether or not to allow it in and around mental health inpatient units.

Cards on the table: I used to smoke. At the height of my psychiatric career I smoked at least 20 a day, often more, as did virtually all my fellow patients, and staff. For the few non-smokers it must have been pretty well insufferable. At that time, you could smoke anywhere, except for a single "non-smoking" room, which nobody ever went into. Then you couldn't smoke anywhere except for a single "smoking" room, which was always crammed.

By the time they brought in the "smoking" room, I had quit. You might think I would have been delighted but actually I was lonely. The air was clean, my clothes smelled fresh, but the ward was deserted. Loneliness is worse than smoke, so I started going into the smoking room, a tiny space whose walls, floor and ceiling were so sticky with tar it looked like the inside of a chronic smoker's lung. It was highly companionable in the lung but also extremely smoky. I found that the only way I could breathe was to filter the smoke through a cigarette and so – after four years abstinence – I started smoking again.

Then they abolished the smoking room and patients who weren't allowed off the ward unaccompanied (most of us) were obliged to wait until a member of staff was free to take us out. Members of staff on inpatient wards are not generally lacking in things to do. Patients, on the other hand, often have nothing to do. The result, a more or less permanent cluster of patients at the nurses' station demanding to be taken outside; stressed-out staff, disgruntled patients and aggravation all round. But there were positives too. The chain-smoking culture of the wards was ended. Had this happened earlier, I might not have started smoking again (and have had to quit again). There are no easy answers.

Now the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) is proposing that smoking should be banned outside hospitals as well. This effectively means that, unless allowed unaccompanied leave, mental health inpatients will be banned from smoking altogether.

Good thing, say campaigners. And about time too: smoking has no place in a therapeutic setting. While I'm not going to argue with the science of this, it does seem regrettable that the same voices are seldom heard campaigning for other essential elements of the "therapeutic setting": decent, healthy food, for example, access to fresh air and exercise, talking therapies, even massage. None of which are provided on your average psychiatric ward.

According to Sue Bailey, the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 90% of mental health patients who smoke would like to stop. "It may take them a little longer [to stop], but they can achieve it," she said. That's good to know. And of course it's important that anyone who wants to stop should be able to access support to do so. But it's also important to keep a sense of perspective. Compelling people to stop smoking at what is, almost by definition, one of the most stressful times in their life? Well, it certainly doesn't seem black and white to me.